Wow.  This report is waaaay overdue, because it's from the Tuesday before Christmas.  It's like, I think I'll have plenty of time to do some writing while out on holiday vacation, but between the 10 or so family and friend gatherings, two girls under the age of 3 being all adorable yet needy, and at least one day spent in and out of the bathroom vomiting my guts up (the day after Christmas, in fact), free time disappears all too quickly.

Obviously, I don't really remember very many details about these particular sessions, but I'll do my best to discuss my impressions from each...


Defenders of the Realm [BGG]

Even though I own this one, we actually played Britt's copy.  I chose the Barbarian because it's technically an expansion (which I don't own), and with the other character selections, our party ended up being quite Charlie's-Angels-esque with three young hotties and one old geezer.   One of my early quests was the Amazon envoy thingy, so I made my way down there (thinking that I looked pretty amazonian myself), but then failed my roll miserably (a theme for the whole game, in fact) and lost the quest. 

I replaced it with one where I had to kill dragon minions, and despite my special power (which let me spend extra action points to add to my die rolls), I failed over and over to kill those that I attacked and ended up taking a significant amount of damage that nearly eliminated me.  Elimination probably would have been preferable, in fact, since you get to restart with a new character in that case, because I instead had to waste 2 or 3 turns healing and moving myself before I could become useful again.

As a group, we started off focusing on the Orc general, and tried for a couple of rounds to coordinate ourselves enough to get enough cards to kill him off.  We finally did so, but that only accelerated the movement of the other generals, and we soon found Monarch City surrounded by all the other three.

We made another attempt to get our crap straight and attacked the undead lord, but failed miserably when I rolled one success on six dice (when I needed 3 successes).  It was ugly.

Time: 74 minutes
Score: Forces of Darkness - VIctorious; Pittiful, unlucky heroes (Britt, Carol*, Steve* & Me) - Dead and buried
Ratings: Britt 8, Carol 7, Steve 9, Me 7

In hindsight, the 7 I rated it may have been a little generous for the experience that it gave me.  Britt and I talked about it a little afterwards, mostly in comparing it to Pandemic , and we pretty much completely disagreed on all counts in our conclusions.

Britt said that he thought Defenders of the Realm fostered more cooperation than Pandemic, but I think that his perception is colored by one particularly bad experience that he had in a game of Pandemic with one of those "domineering expert" players who ran the game for everyone (I'm not sure if that was me or not... I'll have to ask him sometime).  Because I just don't see any particularly new or different mechanics in the game that would require or enhance cooperation in DotR.  And I think that it would be just as vulnerable to the same "one person playing everyone's turn" phenomenon that plagues Pandemic and most other coop games if you played with people of differing experience levels.

The big issue with this particular play was that almost none of the random elements in the game went our way.  I personally failed roll after roll, killing maybe 2 or 3 minions all game long.  We also drew lots of cards that moved the generals, so by 2/3 of the way into the game, we knew that it was pretty much hopeless. I've played many hopeless games of Pandemic that ended in disaster, but the big difference is that a game of Pandemic (particularly one that ends poorly) ends quickly.  In fact, at the point when you realize that things have turned against you, the game has usually just ended right then, rather than dragging on for another 20 or 30 minutes.

And while I'm fully aware that some games of Pandemic are destined to be lost (based on the ordering of the cards and such), it always seems to give at least the illusion of hope and agency to the players, where you usually feel like there just had to be something that you could have done differently and are willing to set it back up and try again immediately.  But in DotR, bad dice rolls are right there in your face, right out on the table, and there's no real way to mitigate their effects.  It sets up players to feel helpeless and ineffective, which almost never happens (in my experience) in Pandemic.  

In writing this report, I can't help but also make the comparison to Ghost Stories, another difficult coop game that uses dice to eliminate threats.  But Ghost Stories at least gives you a way (the Tao tokens) to hedge your bets and account for the randomness of the dice.  What DotR does have going for it is that you have more chances to make the rolls (except when facing the generals), but there's still no way to plan for or mitigate the effects of bad dice rolling.  

But like I said, I already own the game, so I'm still going to give it a fair chance to change my mind.  Maybe we just had especially bad luck this game, and it'll be a lot more fun with more equalized randomness.  I certainly hope so, or otherwise I'll be looking for something good to trade it for... 

Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer [BGG]

The big thing about this game is that it was my first time trying out the Rat King and Vedah, Sage of Swords promo cards.  Both came out, and neither one impressed us much.

I went for a heavy combat deck, buying up an ungodly number of Heavy Infantry throughout the game, but didn't have a lot of card-drawing to give it the extra punch it needed.  Thankfully, I managed to end the game just in the nick of time to stay ahead of Sceadeau by just one point, based a lot on the strength of a 14-point or so turn. 

Time: 29 minutes
Score: Me 58, Sceadeau 57, Steve* 53
Ratings: Me 8, Sceadeau ?, Steve 7

I still like Ascension a lot, and I'm looking forward to some expansions to add a little more depth and variety to it. 

Hansa Teutonica [BGG]

It's hard to remember a lot about specific plays of Hansa Teutonica.  I do remember that Charles was incredibly tired and fell asleep, and then scared the bejezzes out of us and almost fell out of his chair when we woke him up to take his turn.

I also remember that I felt like I was able to build on my success from the week before and actually put together some decent strategy against Sceadeau this time.  I finished second, but still lagged 20 points behind his score. 

Time: 55 minutes (or less)
Score: Sceadeau 45, Me 25, Charles 22, Kenny 16
Ratings: Sceadeau 10, Me 8.5, Charles 10, Kenny 8

Hansa Teutonica is definitely a game that rewards familiarity with the board, awareness of how to score points, and a really solid idea of how to be efficient with your turns.  There are so many ways to invest your effort, and for the most part, it seems that a good many of them are truly viable avenues of seeking victory.  I feel like I'm still only scratching the surface, though, and hope that this game continues to see a lot more play, even after it's time as Game of the Month! is over. 


Other Games Played

7 Wonders
Time: 23, 42 and 40 minutes
Game 1: Tommy 62, Cary* 57, James 57, Sceadeau 56, Chris 45
Game 2: James 66, Chris 54, Mark* 52, Michelle* 49, Juanita* 48, Tommy 38, David* 37
Game 3: James 69, Cary 56, Tommy 53, Chris 46, Dan* 42, Keith 38, Josh* 33
Ratings: James 9, Cary 6.5, Tommy 10, Chris 8.5, Mark 8.5, Sceadeau ?, Michelle 7, David 7.5, Juanita 8, Dan 5, Keith 7.5, Josh 8

Are You the Traitor?
Time: 14 minutes
Score: David 11, Juanita 9, Kenny* 8, Sceadeau 8, Michelle 7, Josh* 2
Ratings: David 7.5, Juanita 6, Kenny 7, Sceadeau 7, Michelle 6.5, Josh 7.5

Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer
Time: ??
Score: James 54, Cary 52, Tommy 47
Ratings: ??

Commands & Colors: Ancients
Time: 40, 35 & 60 minutes
Game 1: Kenny 5, Steve* 4
Game 2: Kenny 5, Josh* 2
Game 3: Josh 8, Kenny 4
Ratings: Kenny 8.5, Josh 8, Steve 8

Dixit
Time: 28 minutes
Score: Chris 36, David 35, Juanita 25, Michelle 22, Mark 18
Ratings: Chris 9.5, David 10, Juanita ?, Michelle 9, Mark 9

Galactic Emperor
Time: 130 minutes
Score: Josh 40, Steve 36, Carol 32, Kenny 26, Britt 25
Ratings: Josh 8, Steve 8, Carol 8, Kenny 8, Britt 8

Hansa Teutonica
Time: 38, 50 and ~120 minutes
Game 1: Sceadeau 54, Chris 31, Josh 11
Game 2: Sceadeau 66, Cary 53, Keith 50, Dan* 26
Game 3: Charles 74, Cary 59, Keith 33, Dan 17
Ratings: Sceadeau 10, Charles 10, Cary 7.5, Chris 8, Keith 8, Dan 6, Josh 8 

Jump Gate
Time: 22 and 32 minutes
Game 1: Tommy* 54, Chris 53, James 38Kenny 5, Steve* 4
Game 2: Chris 47, James 39, Tommy 35
Ratings: Tommy 9, Chris 8, James 9

Parade
Time: 21 minutes
Score: Chris 23, James 25, Tommy* 32 
Ratings: Chris 7, James 7, Tommy 7


* First play for that Person